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/ 14 November 2005
Old Mutual plc, South Africa’s largest insurer, has extended the final closing date for its R38-billion offer for Swedish insurer Skandia to December 16 this year, from the previous date of November 21, the company said on Monday. Old Mutual also said it will be issuing a supplementary prospectus shortly.
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/ 12 November 2005
Surgeon General Vijay Ramlakan confirmed on Friday that Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota had suffered a heart attack on Wednesday. ”He was alone in his official residence in Cape Town when the incident happened. Minister Lekota … was able to summon help from Staff Sergeant Andre Salamat,” he told reporters.
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/ 11 November 2005
Johan Prinsloo, CEO of the South African Rugby Union, was found not guilty of sexual harassment subsequent to a formal disciplinary hearing held in Cape Town. Prinsloo’s legal representatives stated that although not surprised, they are satisfied with the outcome of the hearing.
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/ 11 November 2005
The metropolitan area of Cape Town was without power for almost two hours on Friday afternoon, apparently due to a technical problem related to the Koeberg power station. An outage at the Koeberg nuclear power station cut the electricity supply to the Cape Town city centre, an Eskom spokesperson said.
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/ 11 November 2005
The serving and former MPs facing the music in Travelgate, the parliamentary travel-scam case, on Friday received a provisional indictment that details fraud and alternative theft charges totalling about R24-million. At the same time, a Cape Town magistrate turned up the heat on the Scorpions to finalise their preparation for the case.
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/ 11 November 2005
The African National Congress government seems paranoid about disaffected minorities staging a counter-revolution, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. ”The president seems to think that foreign-funded non-governmental organisations are out to undermine the government,” Leon said.
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/ 11 November 2005
African ministers of finance will be meeting in Tunis on November 22 and 23 to seek common positions on a range of issues affecting regional economic development and chart a course of action for the coming years. The meeting will be hosted by the African Development Bank.
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/ 10 November 2005
South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni deserves support for his position that remaining exchange controls should be abolished, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance. Mboweni said on Wednesday that South Africa’s remaining foreign-exchange controls have become "purposeless".
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/ 10 November 2005
Eight hostel buildings and about 150 shacks were gutted by a fire in Stellenbosch’s Khayamandi settlement on Thursday, the town’s assistant fire chief Bertie Brandsen said. Meanwhile, other firefighters were battling a new blaze in mountainous farmland above the Overberg town of Napier.
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/ 10 November 2005
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota has been admitted to hospital in Cape Town after a medical emergency, his office confirmed on Thursday. Lekota is thought to have suffered a heart attack, but his spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi could not confirm this. Lekota is also the national chairperson of the African National Congress.
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/ 10 November 2005
KwaZulu-Natal African National Congress Premier Sibusiso Ndebele should refrain from attending a routine court appearance of former deputy president Jacob Zuma on Saturday, says Democratic Alliance KwaZulu-Natal leader Roger Burrows. The party says that leading public demonstrations outside court would undermine judicial independence.
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/ 10 November 2005
Tensions in the tripartite alliance in the Western Cape have flared anew with a stinging rebuke in a letter published in the Cape Times on Thursday to Congress of South African Trade Unions provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich by the chairperson of the African National Congress in the province, James Ngculu.
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/ 10 November 2005
SABMiller plc, the world’s second-largest brewer by volume, has reported a 9% rise in its adjusted earnings per share for the six months to the end of September 2005, to 340,5 United States cents from a restated 311,1 US cents a year earlier, the company said on Thursday. SABMiller declared an interim dividend of 13 US cents.
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/ 9 November 2005
There are competing claims to some of the land to which the Constitutional Court has already ruled that the Richtersveld community has a restoration right, it emerged on Wednesday. The announcement was made in the Land Claims Court in Cape Town by the state’s lead counsel in the Richtersveld land hearing.
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/ 9 November 2005
A high-profile South African will be in Dublin next week to boost South Africa’s bid to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup, bid chief executive Francois Pienaar revealed on Wednesday — with eight days to go before the winner is announced. However, he refused to disclose the identity of the mystery South African lobbyist.
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/ 9 November 2005
Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni has warned consumers against getting ”carried away” by the current upswing in the economy, saying inflation could bring some nasty surprises. The level of household debt relative to annual disposable income had already risen to almost 62%, marginally higher than its previous peak, he said on Wednesday.
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/ 9 November 2005
MPs on Wednesday were warned that the Gautrain rapid rail project may be suffering from "optimism bias" where the project may pan out to be far more expensive — and less popular in the eyes of the consumers — than the project planners envisaged.
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/ 9 November 2005
The African National Congress in the Western Cape has disciplined a member who fired shots in the air at a chaotic branch meeting in September, and accepted his protestations of loyalty to the provincial leadership. A disciplinary committee has sentenced Douglas Ndawonde to expulsion, but suspended the punishment for one year.
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/ 9 November 2005
The inauguration of the southern hemisphere’s largest telescope on Thursday near a small South African town would be a milestone towards realising the country’s aim as a ”first-rate science” country, astronomers said this week. The Salt (Southern African Large Telescope) will give astronomers a first-rate glimpse of distant stars, galaxies and quasars.
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/ 8 November 2005
The government is not specially selecting the land of Afrikaans South Africans for expropriation purposes, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Dirk du Toit said on Tuesday. He was briefing the media following discussions between a government delegation led by President Thabo Mbeki and the Afrikaans Discussion Group.
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/ 8 November 2005
The decision by the deputy director general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Lizo Njenje, to resign in exchange for the withdrawal of his court action against Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils — to fight his suspension — was sinister, the Democratic Alliance’s Paul Swart said on Monday.
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/ 7 November 2005
The timber of invasive alien trees cleared off watersheds and river systems around the country is to be used to make "eco-friendly" coffins, the Working for Water Programme said on Monday. Project leader Shaun Cozette said the solid-wood coffins will sell for between R450 and R500 each.
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/ 7 November 2005
Global oil major Total is investing heavily in its African refining and marketing operations, where it expects to record 20% growth over the next few years, according to Philip Jordan, CEO and MD of Total South Africa. He was addressing the Ninth Annual Africa Downstream conference in Cape Town on Monday.
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/ 7 November 2005
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel and Western Cape Congress of South African Trade Unions regional secretary Tony Ehrenreich have taken each other on over the demands of the modern South African state — and how best to run the economy — in a new magazine, <i>Mindshift</i>.
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/ 4 November 2005
A top United Nations Aids envoy this week said poorer nations are doing better than South Africa in the fight against Aids, and accused Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang of preventing him from working in the country with more HIV/Aids sufferers than any other in the world. ”Only the most energetic, uncompromising political leadership can turn this thing around,” he said.
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/ 3 November 2005
Listed furniture, electronic and electric appliances retailer JD Group has reported a 36% rise in its headline earnings per share for the year to the end of August 2005 to 704,7 cents, from 518,5 cents a year earlier. The group declared a final dividend of 167 cents per share.
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/ 3 November 2005
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel says the tax revenue lost through avoidance schemes "clearly runs into billions" of rand and the South African authorities are fine-tuning a mechanism to close existing gaps. He was speaking at the release of a South African Revenue Services discussion paper on tax avoidance.
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/ 3 November 2005
Ajax Cape Town advanced to the semifinal of the lucrative Coca-Cola Cup competition when they beat the star-studded Mamelodi Sundowns on a penalty shoot-out 5-4 in a quarterfinal game played at the Athlone Stadium on Wednesday night. Ajax opened the scoring in the third minute.
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/ 3 November 2005
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has threatened to take legal action against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath within days if the authorities do not move to halt his activities. The Rath Foundation advocates its vitamin products as a treatment for HIV/Aids. It claims anti-retrovirals are toxic.
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/ 2 November 2005
Urgent action is necessary to prevent a new war erupting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Wednesday. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan warned last week that the deterioration of the situation between the two countries could lead to another round of devastating hostilities.
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/ 2 November 2005
The government may amend the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica) to give it more stringency in the fight against money laundering and international terrorism. The justice, crime prevention and security cluster of ministries is to strengthen counter-measures against money laundering and the funding of international terrorism.
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/ 1 November 2005
Beaufort West human rights worker Vuyisa Jantjies faces expulsion from the African National Congress if he carries on accusing its provincial leadership of being soft on corruption, an ANC disciplinary panel has warned. But Jantjies, a staffer at the Karoo Centre for Human Rights and one of the most vocal opponents of the town’s controversial municipal manager Truman Prince, has no intention of backing down.